Dave Fleischer was the credited director on every cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios. Fleischer's actual duties were those of a film producer and creative supervisor, with the head animators doing much of the work assigned to animation directors in other studios. The head animator is the first animator listed.[1] Credited animators are therefore listed for each short.

The black-and-white Popeye cartoons were sold to television distributor Associated Artists Productions (a.a.p.) in 1956, and the three Popeye Color Specials were sold to a.a.p. the following year. The original opening and closing Paramount titles were cut for TV syndication. By the early 2000s, the Popeye shorts were owned by Turner Entertainment, whose Cartoon Network broadcast restored versions of many of the shorts as part of an anthology series called The Popeye Show.

Popeye also appeared in a 1934 short titled Let's Sing with Popeye which had recycled footage from the first Popeye cartoon and had no plot other than to allow the audience to sing along with Popeye via the famous bouncing ball. This film was made for theaters that participated in Paramount's weekly Popeye Fan Club meetings.